I am reading Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin.  Seth is a marketer first and foremost, but has a lot to say about all aspects of business.  Instead of rehashing buzzwords and trying to create new ones, Seth talks a lot about the basic tenants of creativity, art, and productivity.  Linchpin is not his best book.  I recommend The Dip and All Marketers are Liars over Linchpin, but one particular topic really struck a cord with me, and that is the importance of shipping.

I used to work in TV news.  In that game, the goal is to try to be as perfect as possible:  don’t stumble over words, use the right inflection, smile.  Of course that didn’t always happen.  Sometimes there were technical difficulties, every once in a while I would put my foot in my mouth, and sometimes my make-up (yes, and a lot of it) job wasn’t that great and the bags under my eyes told the story of how little I slept.  But no matter what happened, it was live television; so we always had to ship-there was no choice.  Over the years, live became much easier than recorded.  When something was recorded for air later, there was always the opportunity to go back and fix something; to make it better, or as close to perfect as possible.  So even the slightest hesitation of a single syllable, and you could always yell, “stop-down…let’s go again from the top.”  Live was much, much easier because there were no do-overs.

When I left TV, one of the most difficult transitions to make was going back to recorded work.  Just too many opportunities to go back and fix something. Projects I’d estimate at 4 hours would take four days.  Since I ran the show, I could move the ship date, which led to lot’s of second guessing, getting feedback, and editing.  Fixing things and making them better are good, but now I think having a firm shipping date is critical.

At first, shipping no matter what can make your product worse, especially if you make a lot of compromises, but over time, I think it takes your work to a new level.  Drop-dead shipping dates force spontaneous, creative thought.  It forces you to go LIVE, and there is an extra bit of energy in that that polish can never provide.

So yes, you are going to find things on these blog posts that don’t make sense.  Yes, I am going to make errors in my writing.  But I gotta ship.  Over time, I think it will make the product better.